Day: September 10, 2012

Is anyone surprised by this at all? If so, you shouldn’t be. Put Obama’s mug on in primetime while he’s surrounded by popular A-List celebrities performing and giving empty but stirring speeches on a visually appealing stage, combine it with the sustained popularity of former President Bill “Bubba” Clinton, and you’ve got a winning punch.

For the short term.

As far as the long term goes, we have two months to go before election day. Yet I’m already seeing people in panic mode as a result of convention polling favorable to Obama that just bumped him up a few percentage points. STOP. Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media would love for conservatives and Republicans to be do disheartened by the “bounce” that they talk themselves into believing the race is over. It is NOT. Consider this: In the states that matter, the so-called “swing states”, Obama received NO bounce. Yep, still neck and neck in states like North Carolina and Colorado. Would I like to see Romney up by a comfortable margin? Of course. But our work is cut out for us as it has been for months, we’ve all been working our buns off, and now is not the time to throw in the towel. Remember: The MSM and Democrats are notorious for (wrongly) predicting the demise of conservatives and conservatism, as Dana Loesch and @hmfearny remind us here.

Also, consider this: Jay Cost has a good analysis of convention numbers – and summer polling numbers for both Romney and Obama – here, and predicts a typical and eventual bounce fade … just in time for the debates to kick into high gear.

Keep your chin up, your battle gear at hand, and your game face ON. There is never a good time to resign yourself to defeat … especially when victory is so tantalizingly close at hand.

A Maryland Democratic candidate quit her congressional race Monday after her own party told state officials that she had committed fraud by voting in both Maryland and Florida in recent elections.

Wendy Rosen, a small-business owner running against freshman Rep. Andy Harris (R) in the Eastern Shore-based 1st Congressional District, released a statement saying that “with great regret, and much sorrow” she was resigning from the contest.

“Personal issues have made this the hardest decision that I have had to make,” Rosen said

Rosen’s announcement came the same day the state Democratic party released a letter to state Attorney General Douglas Gansler and state prosecutors reporting the allegations against Rosen.

“The Maryland Democratic Party has discovered that Ms. Rosen has been registered to vote in both Florida and Maryland since at least 2006; that she in fact voted in the 2006 general election both in Florida and Maryland; and that she voted in the presidential preference primaries held in both Florida and Maryland in 2008,” wrote Yvette Lewis, the state party chair. “This information is based on an examination of the voter files from both states. We believe that this is a clear violation of Maryland law and urge the appropriate office to conduct a full investigation.”

A senior Maryland Democrat said the party had been tipped off this weekend by someone within the party about Rosen’s potential issue. After checking the allegation, the party contacted Rosen on Monday morning and urged her to quit.

Local Democratic committees in the 1st district will now meet and vote on a new candidate to replace Rosen on the ballot. The new name must be submitted to the state by Sept. 27.

There seems to be some confusion as to whether or not Rosen’s name will have to remain on the ballot. That said, the seat is considered a “safe” one for Harris, so either way he would be the likely victor in November.

This is a not-so-minor embarrassment for Democrats, especially considering their constant bluster about how Republican concerns about exactly this type of voter fraud (among others) are “overblown” and/or “manufactured.” How amusing is it that it happened to one of their own? Oh, and don’t think this was done out of any real sense of right and wrong by Maryland Democrats. Rosen was reported because they didn’t want the GOP opposition getting wind of the news and generating a lot of noise about it, more so that will come from it as it stands now after being “caught” by the left. After all, since when in the heck did Democrats ever care about voter fraud?

For grins and giggles,here’s more on Rosen courtesy of the Baltimore Sun:

Rosen, a Cockeysville businesswoman who is registered to vote in Maryland, told The Baltimore Sun on Monday that she also registered in Florida, where she owned land, in order to support a “very close friend” running for the St. Petersburg City Council and to vote on local issues there.

[…]

Rosen, asked by The Sun whether she voted twice in the 2008 presidential primary, said she did not remember how she voted.

Yeah. That’s illegal. I wonder who the “very close friend” is. There must be a story there. Florida might want to launch an investigation of its own.

In any case, Rosen says that she does not remember whether she cast two votes for Barack Obama in 2008. Which means, of course, that she did but she doesn’t want to admit it with an investigation underway. It was only four years ago. She can’t not remember that.

Oh but she can. At least that’s what she wants you to think, anyway. I think it would rock if anyone in the Beltway MSM would ask her if she had planned to vote twice in this upcoming election as well.

It’s by Dr. Barbara Bellar, a motor-scooter-riding animal lover, Army veteran and Republican attorney who’s taking on a massive challenge of the Chicago political machine for a state Senate seat to combat the fiscal insanity in Barack Obama’s adopted home state, which isn’t an easy job, as you might imagine,…

The sixth of the Seven Deadly Sins is Envy, that insatiable desire to possess something that another person has and the resentment of those who have something you don’t.

In today’s Firewall, Bill Whittle sees our progressive tax code, which takes a greater portion of your income as you make more, for what it is: envy disguised as “fairness.”

I’ve long been a supporter of either a flat tax (one rate and very few deductions for all) or the elimination of the income tax altogether and its replacement by a national sales tax — taxing what you spend, not what you earn and save. (1)

My one quibble is with Bill’s flat tax example: Though the guy earning $100,000 and the guy earning $10,000 are paying the same rate, it’s much harder to get by on $8,300 than it is $83,000. Rather than tax the higher earner more, however, I’d like to see the first $5,000 (for example) of income to be declared non-taxable, and then the tax rate is applied to the remainder. Everyone is still treated equally, everyone still pays (and thus has a stake in the system), but the person making less and, perhaps, struggling gets some help. I think Goldwater had a similar idea.

But that’s just a quibble. Bill’s point is spot on: the heart of our tax code is envy, and progressives rely on that envy to gain and retain power.

Footnote:
1) But only if the 16th amendment, which allows income taxes, is repealed. Otherwise those pirates in Congress will find a way to tax income and spending, sure as the sun rises in the east.